Whistling Dixie Freedom of speech not at issue in country music

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 7, 2003

We've so far avoided commenting on the Dixie Chicks controversy, feeling that what some bubble-headed country crooners had to say about the president, and the public backlash they suffered as a result, was much ado about nothing. The issues involved were clear cut in our view, and the controversy, overwrought.

Even entertainers have a right to say whatever they want to about U.S. foreign policy and politics - and in fact, many have been doing so for decades, getting rich and famous while thumbing their noses at the nation that makes them so. And the people, assuming they take such nonsense seriously, have an equivalent right to shun those entertainers, and not buy what they are selling, if they take offense at those remarks.

That is not censorship, as some have alleged. It is free people making free choices about what to say, what to sell and what to buy in a free market. And it all works out for the best. Maybe the Chicks lost fans and profits over the flap. But perhaps, too, they won over a whole new audience of Bush-bashers. Their mistake was making remarks sure to rankle their fan base, country music listeners who tend to put a premium on patriotism, pick-up trucks, honky-tonks and apple pie.

So what's the big deal? Both the right to speak one's mind, and the right not to patronize entertainers who make statements one disagrees with, are both clearly in the American tradition. We see no effort at censorship. We see no government coercion. We see nothing but free people, free choices and free markets mixing it up. And isn't it wonderful?

But the latest controversy centered here in Colorado Springs, in which country music station KKCS suspended two DJs for playing Dixie Chicks songs in defiance of a station ban on their music, raises a few questions worth mulling. The on-air talent say they were defying station policy in order to stand in defense of free speech. Station management saw things otherwise and ordered the suspensions.

It's sweeps season, when radio and television stations go groveling for ratings, so the whole thing might just be a publicity stunt, and a clever way for the station to ease back into playing the Chicks, as others have (also responding to the ever-changing demands of the marketplace). But real or fabricated, the conflict raises the question of which rights are preeminent - the rights of the DJs to protest or the rights of the station owners to punish them for it?

Actually, resolving this dilemma is as easy on the brain as a Dixie Chicks ditty. We pride ourselves on being protective of First Amendment guarantees, but the property and proprietary rights of the owner clearly trump those of the DJs.

What one says and does on one's own time is one's own business, and obviously subject to the broadest possible freedoms of speech, association, etc. But when one voluntarily enters into someone's employ, as these DJs did, they might be asked to place limits on what they say or do in the workplace, yielding to the right of company owners to decide exactly how they want their business run. An employee's right to free speech and expression does not include the right to say or do things that will ruin the business of those employing them. And if they no longer want to respect the owner's rights, and abide by his or her rules, they are free to seek work elsewhere, or speak their mind in the unemployment lines.

KKCS management was well within its rights to suspend the two, in our view. And they would have been well within their rights to can them. But being tolerant folk, not wanting to attract too much bad publicity, they've opted for a mild punishment. The suspended DJs also have benefited, by being able to posture as champions of free speech and increasing their name recognition (and listener-ship) while keeping their jobs with a company whose policies they violated.

The great thing about America is this: Unlike so many other societies, the government has stayed completely out of the fray, allowing freedom to decide. And that ain't whistling Dixie.

Our man in Baghdad

The recent tapping of L. Paul Bremer, a former diplomat with experience in counter-terrorism, as the civilian in charge of rebuilding Iraq, if nothing else shows that Secretary of State Colin Powell is a masterful behind-the-scenes bureaucratic in-fighter. Whether having a civilian in charge rather than a retired military man will give the eventual interim Iraqi government more international credibility remains an open question, however.

Bremer is well-connected and hardly a dove. After 23 years in the foreign service, including several years as ambassador-at-large for counter-terrorism during the Reagan administration, he became managing director of Kissinger Associates. In 1999 he was appointed chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, which delivered a stern report in 2000 that looked prescient in 2001. And he's obviously the man Powell wants in charge in Baghdad.

As recently as early last week, at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Powell was shown an organization chart suggesting that an aide to defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would oversee the selection of a new government in Iraq. "This is not a current and accurate chart," Powell snapped. Now we know why.